An infamous film production that once brought Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp and Debra Winger to a sleepy Irish fishing village is set for a second lease of life more than 17 years after it was halted due to a lack of funds.

The Hollywood stars were greeted with huge enthusiasm in 1995 as they arrived in Ballycotton, Co Cork, to shoot Divine Rapture, the story of a machinist in a remote village who is hailed as a saint after appearing to return from the dead, rising from the coffin at her own funeral. Winger was to play the lead role, with Brando lined up to portray an elderly priest who believes in the apparent miracle. However, just as production was about to begin it emerged that LA-based backers CineFin did not have the money to proceed and many villagers were left bankrupted after an investment of around $4m failed to materialise.

American producer Barry Navidi, who brought the original project to the county and was responsible for securing Brando, Depp and Winger, yesterday revealed he is finally ready to complete the project with a new cast and under a new title. He hopes to shoot in Ballycotton by the end of the summer and is eyeing Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush for a lead role.

"I'm going to do it within the next six months and with a new cast and updated," Navidi told the Belfast Telegraph. "It will be essentially the same story but this time called Holy Mackerel and with different stars."

The Telegraph's article does not reveal whether villagers who lost out when Divine Rapture abruptly quit town will be involved in the new production. Winger was devastated by the failure of backers to pay up and ended up using her own money to pay villagers who had looked after her children. "I looked around at these people I had gotten to know," she told the Guardian in 2009. "We used someone's fishing boat every day. You don't do this to people. I couldn't stand the thought that this is what showbusiness does. It was devastating for them – not only had we not paid them for the rental of the houses and fishing boats, but they hadn't made the money they would have made catching the fish."

Brando was reportedly the only star of the original production who did get paid. Despite his reputation as something of an eccentric, the Hollywood legend had apparently secured $1m of his $4m wage upfront.